Illness Benefit & Springboard Courses

Hi All

Ive been on illness benefit for 6 months with severe depression. I have no job, I have 100k neg equity in a house down the country that I cant give away and other loans that I cant pay and as Im skint I have to share the house with my ex (great crack).

Mabs have helped some what and stopped the phones calls etc but as a result I have feck all spare cash a week. Some weeks Im lucky if i have €20.00 to spend.

I have good days and bad days and I know that Im not fit to go back to work and my doctor agrees it will be awhile yet before I can work again. But I feel so useless, I cant work due to my condition. I would love to do a course online but cant afford it and came across the springboard website. Im not eligible as illness benefit aint on it so my question is do I stop collecting my illness benefit for afew weeks as you can be eligible if you have no payments or do I try and change from illness benefit to disability benefit. Sorry for the long winded question.

Its just I cant do anything on illness benefit and there are no jobs out there for me now , I feel that my life is wasting away and spend most of my time in bed as I cant afford to put fuel in the car some days. Atleast if I could do a course it might give me something to look forward to.

Illness benefit and disability benefit are the same scheme (disability benefit is the old name for it). Did you mean Disability Allowance? That is a long-term means-tested scheme, not based on PRSI contributions.

You must be in receipt of one of the eligible payments in order to qualify for a Springboard course, so stopping your Illness Benefit claim won't be sufficient unless you re-sign for jobseekers.

Are you able to work part-time? There is a new scheme called Partial Capacity Benefit which allows you to work part-time and keep some of your illness benefit.